Someone please correct me if I mangle the results in question; I know they've shown up here on HN before.
The ones I recall involve a participant in an fMRI machine watching a screen. The instructions are, when something occurs on the screen, decide whether or not to push a button, push the button (or don't) and then report when the conscious decision was made. The studies determined that with the assistance of the fMRI, they could predict the button push before the conscious decision:
1. Screen flash.
2. fMRI prediction.
3. Conscious decision.
4. Button push.
The usual interpretation is that consciousness and free will are illusions; the decision is made without conscious participation.
But I think there's a problem with that interpretation: specifically that its alternative is a strawman: dualism.
My argument: How, exactly, do you expect a conscious decision to be made before the neural machinery goes through whatever convolutions are necessary to make that decision?
Here's my alternative interpretation of the experiment:
1. Screen flash.
2. "Conscious" decision (although the awareness of the decision, as a conscious event itself, does not bubble up until later).
3. fMRI prediction.
4. Awareness (and reporting) of conscious decision.
5. Button push.
Consciousness and free will are not epiphenomena, but the event in the movie in your head has to appear after actual decision. The fMRI prediction is simply seeing the mechanism in progress.
Assuming those studies are correct,...
Someone please correct me if I mangle the results in question; I know they've shown up here on HN before.
The ones I recall involve a participant in an fMRI machine watching a screen. The instructions are, when something occurs on the screen, decide whether or not to push a button, push the button (or don't) and then report when the conscious decision was made. The studies determined that with the assistance of the fMRI, they could predict the button push before the conscious decision:
1. Screen flash.
2. fMRI prediction.
3. Conscious decision.
4. Button push.
The usual interpretation is that consciousness and free will are illusions; the decision is made without conscious participation.
But I think there's a problem with that interpretation: specifically that its alternative is a strawman: dualism.
My argument: How, exactly, do you expect a conscious decision to be made before the neural machinery goes through whatever convolutions are necessary to make that decision?
Here's my alternative interpretation of the experiment:
1. Screen flash.
2. "Conscious" decision (although the awareness of the decision, as a conscious event itself, does not bubble up until later).
3. fMRI prediction.
4. Awareness (and reporting) of conscious decision.
5. Button push.
Consciousness and free will are not epiphenomena, but the event in the movie in your head has to appear after actual decision. The fMRI prediction is simply seeing the mechanism in progress.